Artemis Ocean Racing with skipper Jonny Malbon is currently competing in the Vendée Globe. The Vendée Globe is a sailing race around the world, single handed, with no stopovers. The race will last for 26,000 miles down through the Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope, through the Southern Ocean below Australia, round Cape Horn and back to Les Sables - and takes approx 3 months.

The Vendée Globe organisers call it the "Everest of the seas". In fact, conquering the mountain has proved easier, and in recent years, safer. There have been around 4,000 ascents of Everest. It is not unusual for a fit adult to reach the summit on a corporate trip. The Everest fatality rate since 1990 – the year the first Vendée ended – is 4.4 per cent. Even space travel is much more common than sailing solo around the planet. Some 485 people have been to space, and the fatality rate for space flights is 3.7 per cent (or 18 people).

Only 60 people have ever sailed around the world solo non-stop. Of those, 41 have done it in the quadrennial Vendée Globe (some more than once). Of 67 different people who had tried the Vendée before this year, three have died while doing so: the USA's Mike Plant and Britain's Nigel Burgess in 1992, and Canada's Gerry Roufs in 1997. The Vendée's fatality rate is 4.5 per cent.

Jonny is currently about 1000 miles north of Antartica and 1000 miles south of South Africa, deep in the heart of the Southern Ocean. He's had a few difficult moments, including sailing over a whale - causing damage to the daggerboard, and unfortunately quite a bit of distress for the whale. But Jonny is still going strong, currently on day 32 and in 19th position.

GOOD LUCK JONNY - We're all thinking of you

You can keep track of Jonny and where he is through the following link

http://www.artemisoceanracing.com/